{"id":18309,"date":"2011-02-22T07:28:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T13:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18309"},"modified":"2011-02-22T07:28:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T13:28:39","slug":"culture-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18309","title":{"rendered":"Culture Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni “Rico” Mubarak, some of America’s leftists in places like Minneapolis and Madison are having a hard time twigging the fact that they don’t control everything anymore<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Phoenix Woman” from Mercury Rising, <\/em>is one of them. \u00a0One of her readers is upset<\/a> that National Public Radio isn’t entirely <\/em>their personal toy anymore:<\/p>\n

The following is from an e-mail received from a reader of MR. Said reader has given me permission to reproduce it here, with spelling edits [I’ll just bet there were – Ed.<\/em>]:<\/p>\n

Just tried to call in to Talk of the Nation while they were doing a program on Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Back in the old days, the show used to allow various comments so long as they were on topic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Er, no. \u00a0NPR programs are always tightly <\/em>screened, and always have been.<\/p>\n

But today, the FIRST thing the screener said was \u201cWith a state budget deficit of $2 billion, what should public employees be expected to give?\u201d<\/p>\n

When I tried to say \u201cThey\u2019ve ALREADY given sixteen furlough days in the past two years!\u201d, the screener cut me off, saying that they wanted only people who were going to answer their (loaded) question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It wasn’t a (loaded) question. \u00a0The program had already noted the concessions Wisconsin’s unions have made (listen for yourself<\/a>). \u00a0The subject was not <\/em>“Let’s let Wisconsin union members on the air to bitch about their lives”. \u00a0It was “what is it right to ask?”<\/p>\n

Talk of the Nation <\/em>gets dozens, maybe hundreds, of calls an hour. \u00a0They put maybe 7-8 on the air in a typical hour. \u00a0It’s the screener’s job to make sure those few calls are the ones that make for the best, on-topic <\/em>radio possible.<\/p>\n

A good screener knows that there are four kinds of callers; great ones, average ones, boring one and crazy ones. \u00a0Listening to people carping, off-topic, while not addressing the show’s topic is boring<\/em> and off-topic.<\/p>\n

She was quite brusque, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Screening is a tough job. And I’m gonna bet that there were more than a few “seminar callers, like the person “Phoenix” is quoting, from Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Also, the screener was a government worker.<\/p>\n

NPR: not even Nice Polite Republicans any more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Everyone who doesn’t kiss our butts must be a Republican”.<\/p>\n

I think I get it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni “Rico” Mubarak, some of America’s leftists in places like Minneapolis and Madison are having a hard time twigging the fact that they don’t control everything anymore. “Phoenix Woman” from Mercury Rising, is one of them. \u00a0One of her readers is upset that National Public Radio isn’t entirely their personal toy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,18,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-pc","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18309"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18321,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions\/18321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}